Skip to main content

Review of Emily B. Cataneo's "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories"


Weird Fiction, I think by definition, is a hard genre to describe. Still, I think it's possible to point to a couple of major strains - Classic and New. 

Cover Image for "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories" by Emily B. Cataneo
On one hand you have the heritage of Machen, Blackwood, Gilman, Ligotti, and of course the decrepit and dark idol of HP himself. These are tales almost like ghost stories, where protagonists brush up against the uncanny and either survives or succumbs to bleak fates. These tales tend towards a morose and gothic atmosphere and describe worlds I'd definitely avoid in real life.

Then you have the bizarre stuff like Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Michael Shea, and China Meiville where weirdness is something plastic and garish. Often referred to as the "New Weird," these are works where the universe keeps warping chromosomes and shoving disparate genres into weird hybrids. I'm not sure if I'm that keen to visit Bas-Lag in person, but I'm pretty sure I'd have more fun there than Carcosa. For my part, I'm a fan of both modes, which is why I dig Emily B. Cataneo's upcoming anthology "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories."

One of the most impressive aspects of Cataneo's work is that it manages to combine these two types of weirdness with ease. Actually her works embrace a chimerical quality, borrowing from one literary genre before stretching out a pseudopod to incorporate another. And another. And another. Cataneo's work has an engagingly omnivorous quality, unafraid to mix/match/cut/paste as suits the needs of each of her peculiar and unique tales. But throughout the dozen tales included here a consistent mood prevails: the dark and uncanny gloom of Aiken mixed with the elegant derangements of Octavia Butler and Gemma Files. These are stories that evoke entire worlds, fill them with screwy oddballs, and let them play out their dramas in accordance with their own peculiar motivations.

Highlights in this collection: The title story which reminded me of the 100-acre woods as described by John Shirley, the taunt fantasy of "The Firebird," and the strange pathos of "Victoria's One-Way Ticket's" decaying machines. "My favorite story is "Purple Lemons," which incorporates a meta-fictional theme similar to Les Grossman's "Magicians" while being great deal less beholden to the imaginations of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Please note that I received a copy of this anthology in exchange for an honest review.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl
I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a

Stephen King's 2017

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt&quo